Nine Years
by scorpsifer
Summary: "It's Chinese food and art museums and Sharpie tattoos and stubbed cigarettes on the concrete, but mostly it's him and it's me and the good is always really good, but when it's bad, it's really bad. And bad always over powers good." ONE SHOT. AU


_**Author's Note:**__So, this is something I wrote up a while ago. It's short and not a heavy load of reading but I thought it was enough to share. Hope you guys enjoy it; feel free to chew over the story as much as you want. All comments are welcomed (:_

**_Disclaimer:_**_ Stephanie Meyer owns these characters. I just play._

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I was in college and we were young and he said he _loves_ me but I said _don't_.

_"You don't want to love me. I'm leaving next year."_

But that didn't stop him. It didn't even stop myself. Because I let him love me like I let any other guy love me.

I was… me. And everyone knew who I was and the type of person I was and what I could do and no one seemed surprised but him when I said "I don't want this anymore."

But I was in college and we were young and he said _don't_ while I still _did_ anyway and that's how we ended up here together nine years later and I still remember how his face looked when he said that one word.

_Don't._

We met in one of the many empty parking lots our university had; there were construction trucks everywhere because they were building a new dorm building. They had been in the process of building this dorm building since the time the first _Bring It On_ movie premiered in theaters.

I was a social smoker back then and didn't really care about anything besides how beatnik I looked with a cigarette between my two tattooed fingers. Of course they weren't really tattoos, I just Sharpied myself in class when I was bored. But I really did like the action of smoking because in a way, it brought peace to my lips as well as a new smell to my hair but I didn't think of it at the time.

He was in one of my classes freshman year and I didn't know who he was because when I sat in a seat in class, I didn't look at who was behind me. Even when someone answered a question, I didn't bother to turn around to see who was speaking. So I never saw him. I may have heard his voice but how could I have been so sure since I never saw a face to match?

He came up to me and my girls with his guys and one of them asked to bum a cigarette. He didn't; he stood there with his hands in his pockets, bracing the breeze that was blowing at his soft side. The whole time his buddies were chatting up my girls he's just standing there and I was just standing there and by the end of my cigarette he asked me if we were in the same class together. I laughed because I wasn't even sure.

He was cute and smart and wore button downs and had contacts and crooked teeth but certainly not someone I would ever know on any intimate level. I liked facial hair and chest tattoos and motorcycle drivers and vodka drinkers. But he seemed as if he drank from spring water from plastic bottles and shaved and my young mind wasn't accustomed to anything outside my comfort-zone. I liked what I liked and there wasn't much changing that.

But the strong sense of determination was thriving off of him and he knew his way around a dictionary and I liked the way his lips mouthed certain words I didn't know the definition of.

He said he liked my ripped jeans.

I said he shouldn't like anything about me.

I said not to get to know me.

I said it was because this was my last semester here.

He said he didn't care.

I think at one point he decided it was actually real when we were video chatting through the computer while I was on one side of the country while he was on the other. But it didn't stop him from talking to me every night.

During that last semester he decided 'getting to know me' was worth the fourth months, so I decided he was something to hold on to for a while. And I invited him over to my dorm room for the first time and warned my roommate ahead of time.

We knew it was serious because she actually put the roll of toilet paper on the metal holder on the wall—usually we just left it out, being too lazy to change the roll every time we used it up. But he laughed and thought it was funny. He spent a lot of time in our dorm room and maybe my roommate got the wrong impression because thinking about it now, she always seemed to have left the room whenever he dropped by. But when she did stay in and we all squeezed on the couch—him in the middle of course—we watched movies or T.V shows or did homework or complained about school but whatever we ended up doing, we did it in 3's.

When I left though that summer, it was hard because he still remained at the university while I went north-west for the city. I wanted to be an arts major and I wanted to paint and I just wanted to express myself.

He asked me this over the computer every time we spoke: "Are you expressing yourself enough?"

I never knew how to answer the question. And maybe there was good reason to it.

Sure, we were opposites and sure I was a strong believer, a firm believer, in opposites attracting, but he and I were too opposite. Because when it was good, it was really good, but when it was bad, it was _really_ bad. And bad always overpowered the good. You know, when couples break up and then they start to reminisce on all the good stuff, they usually want to get back together—without remembering all the bad stuff was what got them in trouble when they decided to go for round two. But for me, it was the opposite. Every time I thought back, I only remembered the bad.

And that's what killed it.

Because being with him was good. I let him love me. I was good at that. But reciprocating it? No. I was never good at that. I suppose the good was really good. Too good. He was too good.

He was the book nerd and I was the dirty painter. The dress shirt and the acid jeans. The clean shaven and the messy bun. The tit and the tat. The ying and yang. The good and the bad. And he was definitely the good.

So when I think it came to me saying "I don't want this anymore", it was his _don't_ that made me realize that expressing myself was maybe not all it was cracked out to be. I think I was still holding out for something that was inked up and had a dangerous profession.

After we broke up, I had finally put on those memory goggles and forced myself to think of all the good. And it was stupid of me to do so because in the end, I was like all those others wishing for the relationship to breach its second chance.

Senior year, he came to my apartment and we had Chinese food on the floor. Dumplings and Lo Mein and the toilet paper roll not on the metal wall holder; he turned to me and said he wanted to get back together. And so we got back together. On the floor, on the couch, or in the shower, we got back together. And when it was good, oh it was _really_ good.

But when it was bad, it got _worse_.

And you think the fighting would have tipped me off but it didn't.

You think the not coming home until the wee hours of the morning would have done something to spark a hint of madness but it didn't.

And you think being mad about life in general was the big blinking sign in the relationship, but sadly, I was wearing my memory goggles.

But it was when he had now been going to the same university as me because he transferred, it was when we were living in the same apartment together because we didn't want to be apart, it was when we were in our senior year of college when the toilet paper roll made its way back onto the metal wall holder that made me realize what was going on.

Eventually I found out because secrets didn't remain secrets forever. And fooling around with another girl wasn't something that was clever or original but it hurt anyway. Apparently she wore business casual every day and always did her hair in the morning and only wore jeans on the weekends and thought History was a proper area of study to take in college. I think it was her smell that made my stomach curl and my hair break at the ends. She smelt like a hospital; something clinical, something cold.

She wasn't me.

And I guess he liked that.

Five years later, he was older and I was older.

He finally got that goatee and I finally broke into my wallet for a business dress. And it wasn't Chinese food but a pack of beer and it wasn't on the couch or in the shower or on the floor but in his bed and the scratch of his beard was more euphoric than any brush of his fingers could accomplish. And I think it was strange when the next morning, he was out of the apartment at his job and I gathered myself to go to mine.

It was different and odd and it was no more computers, but cell phones when we communicated and I felt the child's play die down in the presence of the adult world because he was still him and I was still me and I just wanted to express myself.

It was hard making a living off of my paintings so my job at night was typing up memoirs for a retired writer. The old lady probably hated me because I chewed on her pens and wore funny looking glasses when I typed but she paid me well and it was enough to get by. But it was odd because she thought this was my profession; she had never seen one of my paintings and she didn't know who I was or what I liked to do in the day time. Only what I typed was what she knew and what she knew was that I typed fast.

He came around every so often and it was with different women. All different shapes and sizes and some that reminded me of me and some that didn't. But he never had them for more than a few months while he had me for years. Not in his bed, but on his chain, in his jacket, in his cell phone, at close call whenever he wanted me. And he was still this book nerd with better looking teeth but I was still a loser selling my art on the street because there was nothing else better I could do.

At some point in time it all changed, and again, it was me on the other spectrum saying _don't_ when he called me 3 in the morning. His tone was one of surprise, like the day in freshman year when I said he shouldn't know me.

And that was it for a while.

And another two years went by and I was sleeping in another man's bed and I was still thinking about him. And it was wrong and I knew it and it hurt me but I couldn't help it. Because I felt him everywhere, on the canvases I painted on, in the words I wrote out, and in the motions I moved through as I rocked against my fiance's chest at night.

So it was one night out of the year, nothing particular about the day, that I called him. And his phone was disconnected and it made me believe he changed numbers for reasons I didn't have any business knowing. So I decided that was the last time I would try to contact him.

So I let my fiancé marry me.

And it was because before the wedding, my mother bumped into _his_ mother that he got an invitation. _He_ sat on the bride's side of the chapel, my side, and watched me as I made my way down the aisle.

And it was when the pastor started the service that everyone sat down and watched as the white of my dress washed me out like a blanket of snow in the north. And it was when the pastor said a selective pair of words that one body, from the bride's side, stood back up.

Nine years. Nine years since college, since we met, since it all happened.

Eight years since I moved to the city to pursue a career that had an expiration date from the beginning.

Seven years since the good was really good and the bad was really bad.

Six years since the Chinese food restaurant never had that many calls in a summer.

Five years since my bed never felt like my bed.

Four years since my paintings went on clearance at the art shop in town.

Three years since my paintings were shipped over to the thrift stores instead.

Two years since I made that one phone call to a disconnected number.

One year since his name barely made an appearance in my daily activity.

And now half a second since the whole chapel gasped and I look over at him for the first time in a really _long_ time and he says the words again: "I object."

His words are laced with age and I think it's a song when he begins, but it's only painful to hear. He sharply expresses how his timing is bad and how this should have been done a long time ago. His mind races and it doesn't match the beating of his speech but it's okay because you can tell it's from the soul. He goes on to say that there was not a day that went by that he didn't think about me. How it's wrong how the universe let us end up this way though he doesn't let it take the blame for mistakes he should have handled. And when he's done, he's not looking around for anyone's approval but my own. He ends with words that hurt.

"Just… don't."

It's quiet now. And for the first time in my life I have my hair pushed out of my face but I want it down and around my cheeks so it can swallow me whole. And when it's the pastor who steps up to say the first words, I can barely look at him.

"Well, Ms. Swan?" He's nervous, as any pastor should be if a moment such as this should occur. No one ever really hopes there is an objection at a ceremony.

Finally, with a jolt of my head, I shake it unwillingly. Back and forth, though the curls on top of my head don't shake loose, I shake my head with certainty now.

"No," the word is soft but it's there, out in the open. "No," I say again.

It's because no matter how much I will see of his face in my dreams or speak of his name or know of him as the guy with the button-downs, there was never a future there. Not with him, not ever. Just some old Chinese food and empty toilet paper rolls.

"Shall we proceed then?"

The answer 'yes' is given to that question only, and now that I have turned back around, I can hear someone exit the chapel behind me. I don't look.

"Alright, do you, Isabella Swan, take this man, Edward Cullen, to be your lawfully wedded husband?" I look over at my fiance and smile.

And it's an _I do._

No more _don'ts._

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**So... that's it. ****I hope you all enjoyed it :)**

**Feel free to leave reviews, always!**


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